


when your hands go out

by depugnare



Series: Never Gonna Be a Whole Fic [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-War, they're not fully together i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 03:04:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6356392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/depugnare/pseuds/depugnare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky reaches for Steve’s hand and for the first time, Steve does not reach back. He’s dropped his sketch and charcoal, flying out the door as the broadcast switches back to the game coverage. While everyone around him bursts into worried chattering, Bucky stands with his hand clenched around nothing, wondering just what it is this war is going to do to him if it’s already cost him Steve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when your hands go out

okay, but before steve and bucky were tweens and teenagers prowling through the streets, they must have been sweet boys, like all boys are before they grow up.

They’d hold hands and whisper, missing teeth gaps whistling while they told each other secrets that were grand (I caught a real, live frog, wanna see?) and not so grand (mama’s gonna have a baby. what am I supposed to do with a baby?!). They would be tangled together in that way puppies do, tripping over each other, ankles getting locked together as they run too fast towards the same destination. Tight hugs, still awkward and more arms around necks than anything, Bucky a little chubbier than Steve and swallowing him up in the winter (I’m not moving! he tells the teacher. Steve’s cold!). Tears would be met with offers of rocks and toys and pieces of sweets (anything to stop those awful emotions that weren’t happiness, mischief and nonchalance), and anger would be met with fights that last for five minutes, and apologies that last for ten. They’d sleep curled together, tucked under the worn knit blanket at the Roger’s place, or the thick flannel one at the Barnes’ home, and wake up early talking softly about strange things (like grown ups and nice china that’s never used and The Great War That’s Whispered About) until one of their mothers came to get them up for breakfast.

One day they would get a little older (Bucky about ten, Steve coming up on nine) and their mamas would scold them for holding hands - (honey I know, I know, but you can’t. people just wouldn’t like it) - but they still do anyways, tangling dirt-smudged hands together as they barrel down the street, shrieking like a pair of crows. They’d laugh (sometimes meanly, snickering after they’d pushed a girl for saying something snide and she’d fallen in a mud puddle), and shout (sometimes in joy, other times in anger) and make all sorts of strange sound effects for their fake battles and imaginary guns (later those noises will echo in their ears, unable to forget just how wrong they’d been about the sounds of war). They get in trouble, scabbed knees and dirty faces, ripped clothes (those made Sarah Rogers especially furious) and messy hair. (they hold hands inside the house, pinkies linked as they stumble through their imaginary worlds together).

They’d grow until they were teenagers, lean with new muscle and awkward with unfamiliar bones. Steve would grow whip-thin, not so much tall as long, fingers bony and sharp. Bucky would grow tall, but his shoulders would widen, his ribs expand, legs and arms growing bulky with muscle earned through work. They’d be a strange pair, the thin boy with a sharp temper and sharper teeth and the strong boy with fight-tempered fists and a glowing smile. At seventeen, Steve is the youngest boy in their class, but he’s weary beyond his years. He’s becoming faded, like the yellowed drawings under his bed (and jammed in Bucky’s drawer at home). His mother is ill again, and this time she can’t seem to shake it (he’s ill too, something in his chest, making his heart hurt). At eighteen Bucky is handsome, the only boy in his family and taking strongly after his father. He has had to become a man (slower than Steve had. Steve who had no man in his house but a faded picture on the living room wall), responsible and tough. Though his parents do not like it, this includes Steve, who he can always be found running the streets with (sometimes there are girls with them) sometimes, deep in the shadows of alleys, his hand is clasped around Steve’s (fingers tangled, pulling the smaller man to his feet, wiping blood from his face). Sometimes they spend quiet nights on the roof of Steve’s rickety tenement and here there is no mistaking their hand-holding. Tenuous but strong, their grip on each other is a testament (to what, they don’t yet know, they only know it is for them alone).

Steve’s ma would die (her own breath failing her, drowning in the tears she’d held back her whole life) and he’d find himself alone in their apartment, watching the laundry sway on the clothesline outside for hours. Her favorite dress (faded blue with age worn pink flowers) seems lonely without her, haunted by her absence as it swings in the breeze. After her funeral (after Bucky follows him home in his nice suit, a gift for his birthday not two months ago, and presses a hand-warmed key in his palm) Bucky slowly edges Steve back into the world. Steve takes three jobs and loses two of them weeks after (the flu), gains two more jobs and loses his first (no longer needed), and finally lands a job painting signs and fixing trim and other small jobs around the neighborhood (sometimes his job takes him to Manhattan, where downtown always seems to soar higher and warmly glow, despite how the rest of the city is slowly fading away). Bucky sometimes tags along when his deliveries are nearby and they take smoke breaks down by the water, watching ships come into the harbor. Eventually, Steve has a bit of extra money and he joins an art class he’s able to go to a couple evenings a week (it’s cathartic, charcoal whispering across crisp paper while soft chatter and music ebbs and flows in the background). One day Bucky helps him bring his easel and canvas for a project, and after that he’s there so regularly that the teacher has him start moving things around to “keep him out of the way of quality workmanship”. Bucky is helping a young lady set up her easel while Steve draws both their expressions of frustration with a gentle smile when a harried voice interrupts the Giants-Dodgers game

_“We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this important bulletin from the United Press-Flash- Washington, the White House announces Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor--”_

Bucky reaches for Steve’s hand and for the first time, Steve does not reach back. He’s dropped his sketch and charcoal, flying out the door as the broadcast switches back to the game coverage. While everyone around him bursts into worried chattering, Bucky stands with his hand clenched around nothing, wondering just what it is this war is going to do to him if it’s already cost him Steve.


End file.
